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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28516614">Alone</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68'>owlaholic68</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Monster of the Week (Tabletop RPG)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood Drinking, Delusions, Georgie is extra creepy in this, Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, M/M, Mirror Universe, Obsessive Behavior, Panic Attacks, Post Sonya-Stacey Wedding, Post-Canon, Protective Siblings, References to Depression, Stalking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:53:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,268</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28516614</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A Lucy, a Lucy, and a Georgie.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Male Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Mirror Universe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lucy’s dear brother tumbles out of the portal two seconds after James’ corpse.</p><p>He’s immediately on his knees clutching his dead love to his chest and screaming for Lucy to do something, to help, to bring James back.</p><p>Torn between relief at having her brother back and upset at his emotional state, Lucy sighs. Stacey helps her drag Jacques away from James’ body. It’s harder to do this than last time: Jacques isn’t as weakened. He can stand on his own. He can kick and fight and give them a hard time trying to get him to even let go of James’ cold corpse.</p><p>“Maybe we should let him say goodbye,” Stacey quietly suggests. “This could be too much of a shock. It might help if he has time to process it on his own.” She kneels and gives up on trying to manhandle Jacques. “Jacques, you need to say goodbye to him.”</p><p>Lucy doesn’t think it’ll help, but she joins Stacey. She strokes her brother’s hair. “I’m sorry, brother, but you’re not going to be able to bring him back again. This is it. Tell him goodbye so that you can move on with your life, okay?”</p><p>Jacques shakes his head. Fresh tears are rolling down his cheeks. “I – I <em>can’t,” </em>he sobs. He’s cradling James’ head, stroking his former lover’s cheeks and nose. “He – he’s not gone. He’s right here. I can bring him back again, Lucy, and this time – this time, he’ll be right. He’ll be <em>my </em>James again. Just give me another chance, Luce, <em>please.” </em></p><p>“Oh, Jacques…” Lucy hugs him. “You can’t bring him back. You can’t.”</p><p>“No!” Jacques screams and shoves himself out of her grip. “No, <em>no! </em>He’s going to come back, isn’t he? He – he’s got to, I can’t go on without him again, Luce. He’s coming back. I – I’ll make sure of it. I’ll bring him back to me: I <em>need </em>him!” Jacques is shrieking now, shaking with the force of his despair. “I <em>need him! I can’t live without him!” </em></p><p>“We should knock him out,” Stacey says. Her face is pale. “He’s so much worse than last time.”</p><p>Lucy nods. She wipes away a few tears of her own. “J-Jacques, I’m so sorry. He’s not coming back. You <em>can </em>live without him, okay? You’re going to. Now say goodbye to him.”</p><p>Jacques curls over the corpse and shakes his head. “I love you,” Lucy hears him whisper. “I’m never going to stop loving you. I’m never going to stop trying to bring you back, okay? You’re not gone. You’ll never be gone for me.” He kisses James’ cold lips. “J-James, sweetheart, I’ll love you forever. I love you, I love you, I love you-”</p><p>Stacey glances at Lucy and sadly shakes her head. She reaches out, touches Jacques’ forehead, and with a burst of magic he is safely unconscious.</p><p>They burn James’ body. They drag Jacques back to the Org, tie him to a chair with enchanted rope, and prepare for Hell.</p><hr/><p>Stacey was correct: Jacques is worse than the last time that James had died.</p><p>He had this wonderful false hope that bringing James back would solve everything and make everything better, and Lucy can’t get it through his head that he can’t just try it again. She can’t seem to make him understand that it’s over, that James is really gone this time and is never ever coming back.</p><p>Jacques spends the first several months constantly crying. Screaming, struggling against his bindings, and begging James to come back.</p><p>That’s one of the things that breaks Lucy’s heart the most: he’s not begging her to bring him back, he’s not asking her to let him go. He just wants his lover to come back from whatever dark place he’s gone. He’s not pleading for the cruel vampiric James to be alive, he wants <em>his </em>James to exist again. The original one, the kind and gentle one that existed before he was turned. It pains Lucy to realize how far her heartbroken brother has backslid.</p><p>They have to knock him out a lot.</p><hr/><p>After six months of this horrible nightmare, Lucy breaks.</p><p>She digs in the storage bins of the Org and finds a box of photo albums. Taped to the front of an album is a manilla file folder full of photocopies, many of them laminated. She takes one of the photos.</p><p>“Dear brother.” Lucy enters into a familiar scene: Jacques sobbing James’ name and trying to fruitlessly break free of his bindings. Her heart aches: she can’t take this anymore. “I have someone special to visit you.”</p><p>Jacques perks up. He sniffles. “Luce?”</p><p>That’s a good sign. Sometimes he doesn’t recognize her or react to her voice.</p><p>Lucy forces a smile. “Yes, it’s me. How are you feeling?”</p><p>Jacques’ expression drops. The tears return. “I – I can’t <em>breathe,”</em> he blubbers. “Everything hurts. I miss him. I can’t breathe anymore. I – I think I’m going to <em>die</em> without him, Luce. I can’t breathe anymore.”</p><p>Since he’s looking away, Lucy shudders. He’s been saying that a lot: that he can’t breathe anymore. That’s what had pushed her to do this even knowing that it could be detrimental to his overall recovery. Anything to make him feel like he should be alive.</p><p>“Well, he’s here to visit you,” she says. It’s hard not to cry herself: she’s forcing herself to word things in a way that makes her feel awful. Indulging Jacques in his fantasies never feels good.</p><p>But it is briefly worth it when her morose brother’s head snaps up. Jacques slowly smiles. The first time she’s seen him smile in so awfully long. “He – he’s here?”</p><p>“He’s here to visit for a little while,” Lucy confirms. She takes the photo out from behind her back. This one was a photo portrait of James for some university event: it was clear, large, and James was smiling in it. It was one of Jacques’ favorite pictures of him. “He’s going to have to leave after a few hours, though. Is that okay?”</p><p>“No, but I’m happy that he’s visiting.” Jacques cranes his neck to look at the photo since Lucy’s holding it at an angle that he can’t see it yet. “I don’t want him to leave so soon. I don’t want him to leave at all.”</p><p>“Well, he’s going to. You’ll respect what he wants, right?”</p><p>There is a slight change in Jacques. He has this awful tendency to go along with whatever someone else wants. He nods. “Okay. Whatever he wants.”</p><p>“Good.” Lucy finally shows him the picture. She sets it on a stand in front of the chair so Jacques has a good view of it. Last time they did this, she’d had to wrestle the photos out of Jacques’ hands while he begged her not to, upset that “his James” was being “taken away” from him. Hopefully this will prevent that from happening again.</p><p>Jacques’ smile is wide and delighted. His eyes are twinkling. There are no more tears, no more wails of mourning. Just smiles and happy hums. Jacques’ enchantment is broken when he tries to touch the photo as he often had the habit of doing. His arms and hands are still tied down and he becomes agitated when he realizes that.</p><p>“Hey, hey…” Lucy intervenes. “You want to touch him, don’t you?”</p><p>“Y-Yeah,” Jacques stammers. “Luce, p-please…”</p><p>“You need to respect his space, okay? Maybe you can touch him later when he wants you to.” Lucy lays on the fiction a little thick, but she just wants that wonderful smile to come back. All she ever wanted in this whole disaster is for her brother to be happy. “But he doesn’t want that right now. He wants you to keep your hands to yourself. Will you do that?”</p><p>The agitation disappears. Jacques nods and slowly smiles again. “Yes. Whatever he wants. Whatever he wants.” He turns back to the picture and enthusiastically bounces up and down in his chair. “I want to make him happy, Lucy. I love him so very much.”</p><p>“I know.” Lucy strokes his hair.</p><p>“He’s so <em>handsome!”</em> Jacques squeals with glee. “He’s so pretty and so lovely and I’m so glad he’s here, Luce!” His eyes are wide and unblinking as he stares at the picture. But his bright blue eyes are taken over by the power of such an alluring fantasy. “Oh, I just want to stare at him forever and ever. He’s wonderful and beautiful and – and he’s absolutely perfect, Lucy, did you know that?”</p><p>“Hm.” It’s becoming harder and harder not to cry. Trading unhappiness for happiness comes at this steep price of delusion. Her brother has always had a weak mind: particularly vulnerable to mind control. And isn’t that what she’s doing now by giving him this? How is that helping him?</p><p>“We were made for each other,” Jacques continues to blissfully ramble. “I can’t live without him. I need him and he needs me and we should always be together, Lucy, that’s just what’s right. I’m glad that he decided to visit.” He spends several content minutes staring at the photo. “So handsome,” he keeps repeating to himself. “So perfect. He can come back whenever he wants. I love him.”</p><p>Lucy lets this go on for an hour. Jacques is often silent, keeping up his unbroken staring, but he tells her a few short barely-coherent stories about James in a quiet reverent voice.</p><p>“James has to leave now,” Lucy informs him. “He’ll be back. Say goodbye.”</p><p>“Okay,” Jacques chirps. “Bye, James. See you later. I love you, darling.” He watches Lucy take the picture away and put it behind her back. There are no tantrums, no fresh heartbreak. Just wide dazed smiles.</p><p>Even when she leaves the room, there is no screaming for her to bring James back. There are no more tears for the rest of the day.</p><p>Not from Jacques, at least. Lucy spends the remainder of the day in her office hyperventilating and trying to avoid the painful truth:</p><p>Her brother is <em>broken. </em></p><p>He has been shattered into tiny pieces. She thought she had been putting him back together, but she had only been helping him sweep up the pieces and glue them in place in an awful mockery of his former self. Then Jacques left, resurrected his dead love, and broke himself all over again.</p><p>But this time, none of the pieces will fit back into their places. Jacques has crumbled and there’s no fixing him anymore. There’s no putting her brother back together.</p><p>The demon once known as Jacques is no more. All that’s left is an empty shell.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Regular Universe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lucy stops by Caradoc’s bakery to pick up some sweets. This time she buys a tray of cupcakes for the office, a bag of chocolate croissants, and a few cookies. There are new chairs and tables in the small café area: she makes sure to insult them. They’re a very tacky color.</p><p>But she can’t sit around and tease her weird monster nephew for too long: she doesn’t want to be late. She has a very narrow window of time to do what she needs to do.</p><p>It’s an unpleasant task, but somebody has to do it. At least her sister gets sweets out of it: things at the office go more smoothly when the boss is on a sugar high.</p><p>Across town, precisely at three-thirty in the afternoon, Lucy knocks on the door to James’ house. As usual, the curtains are drawn. James’ antique car is in the driveway, freshly washed. That’s a positive sign: it’d been sitting in the garage covered in dust the last few time’s she’d visited. He must have gone somewhere. Maybe her new tactic of refusing to bring him food, tea, and books has been paying off, forcing him to actually leave the house.</p><p>When she knocks, there’s no answer. Again, nothing unusual.</p><p>Lucy knocks one more time to be polite, then opens the door with her key. The wards around the house let her in as they should: she’s the one who'd been forced to put them up.</p><p>The house is dark. Much of the furniture has changed: different rugs, a new couch in a mid-century style, and changed pictures on the walls. The large window in the living room is still covered by curtains, and the mirror in the entry hall still has a cloth draped over it. Damn Victorians and their superstitions.</p><p>Speaking of old traditions, Lucy finds James in the kitchen sitting down for a cup of afternoon tea. It’s one of the few times of the day when he’s not holed up somewhere buried in a book. He’s wearing all black, down to a pair of black gloves and a darkly tinted locket around his neck that Lucy knows contains a portrait of Jacques and a lock of his hair.</p><p>“H-Hello, Lucy,” he quietly says. “How are you?”</p><p>“I brought treats from Caradoc,” she says instead of answering his question. No sense in asking it back: she already knows the answer. “He’s got new chairs in the café. They’re a dreadful color.”</p><p>He cracks a brief smile. “Perhaps Caradoc is color-blind. It – it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that H-Harriett forgot to give them an accurate sense of – of sight.” He pours her a cup of tea. His hands tremble.</p><p>Lucy sits and obligingly drinks. She hates tea and tries not to make too much of a face. It’s not as bad as normal: some new kind of smoky green tea blend. A few of the pastries are split between them, despite the fact that neither of them has a real need to eat. The routine is comforting to James, though.</p><p>They don’t talk for at least five minutes, at least. Time flies by whenever Lucy visits: all the clocks in the house were stopped years ago and never restarted. She tries to down the tea as quickly as possible to make this stupid chore go faster.</p><p>“You left the house recently,” she remarks when she’s fucking sick of the silence. “Library?”</p><p>James shakes his head. “No, I ran out of mice for Sunshine.” He keeps his head down, hunched over in his chair curled over his cup. “And – and a new tea shop opened up downtown. They had a proper Earl Grey Cream blend.”</p><p>“That’s good.” Lucy falls back into silence. Every conversation with James is like dragging nails through her brain. She’s only doing this because she has to, because the Departments of Hell realized that they needed protocol for when a married demon dies before its non-demon partner.</p><p>
  <em>The Department of the former Demon has the utmost responsibility to care for the Earth-bound widow in all aspects of their life. The Second of the Department must provide all that the widow requires in necessary sustenance, earthly comforts, protection, company, and everything else that may arise. </em>
</p><p>Damn these stupid new regulations. Lucy only knows that Harriett agreed to them in order to smooth things over with the other Departments, who were suspicious at the upheaval in the Wrath office. A Head and a Second permanently killed in the same day? The Head trying to kill the Second's husband after engineering his murder? Unheard of. Considered tantamount to a coup.</p><p>Lucy finishes the last dregs of her tea and the last crumbs of her pastry. “I need to leave,” she bluntly says. “I’ll put some extra blood in the fridge.”</p><p>James nods. He stands and folds his napkin. “Um…”</p><p>“Just fucking bite me,” Lucy snaps. She wants to leave. She hates this. She wants to leave this house and never ever come back. She wishes that the Departments hadn’t specified that James needed to receive the same level of nutrition as before. That they couldn’t just supply him with human blood. No, it had to be demon blood of a certain caliber. Fucking stupid rules: there’s nothing that Lucy hates more than rules.</p><p>Tears come to James’ eyes. He nods and gently bites Lucy’s neck, drinking her blood for a long minute.</p><p>“Bye,” Lucy mutters when he’s done.</p><p>“Goodbye, Lucy.” James heavily sits in his chair and buries his face in a black-embroidered handkerchief. This has happened every time he’s fed from her: he once explained between sobs that something about the feeding reminds of him too much of Jacques.</p><p>Lucy sighs. She leaves a few jars of blood in the basement fridge. There is another jar in here, smaller and marked with a date from years ago. It’s probably not even good anymore, but James can’t let it go. It moves position sometimes, like he takes out and what? Drinks from it? That’ll make him sick.</p><p>It’s making her feel kind of sick too, now. Lucy makes her escape from the house and returns back to Hell. She shoves the baked goods into her busy sister’s hands and goes down to the lower levels to torture some souls.</p><p>Harriett doesn’t follow and doesn’t say anything: she knows Lucy’s mandatory errand and knows that she doesn’t want to talk about it.</p><p>The screams of undead sinners help Lucy forget about James. She’ll have to go back in a month and that sucks, but for now she’ll give herself a bit of fun.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Mirror Georgie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Georgie can’t stop thinking about Elliot. There’s no way to get him out of his mind. Elliot in this universe was even more handsome and wonderful than the one in Georgie’s original world, he decides. How smart he was, how quick and clever. Graceful with his hands, powerful with his magic.</p><p><em>I’m not your Elliot, </em>this Elliot had yelled.</p><p>It’s true. He wasn’t. He was <em>better. </em></p><p><em>You’re delusional. Your Elliot is dead. </em>The first was probably true. The second was a fact.</p><p>Delusional? Most likely. Georgie could admit that perhaps he had been delusional in how easy it would be to turn Elliot to his side. The rest of his plan had gone splendidly: this world’s Georgie was weak and easy to put away. Even more simple to take his place: Georgie had had time to watch him and learn his mannerisms. That, coupled with the stolen distinctive clothing, made that part of his strategy go smoothly.</p><p>But perhaps he pushed too hard on the contract. It was the wrong time, Georgie muses. This Elliot was less naïve, less trusting. He cannot deny his own overconfident fantasy that Elliot would simply sign a contract without reading it. Or that, should he read it as he had done, that he wouldn’t immediately realize what was going on.</p><p>Delusional about that? Yes, Georgie had been delusional.</p><p>But he was this way for <em>love, </em>didn’t Elliot understand? Elliot loved his Georgie, so why in the world didn’t he understand that Georgie loved him as much or more?</p><p>That was what had driven Georgie, in a fit of admittedly jealous rage, to decide that Elliot was his and nobody else could have him and if Georgie was not allowed to have Elliot, then nobody could. Nobody could love Elliot like he could. Not even this other pathetic excuse of a demon named Georgie.</p><p>Georgie scrolls through pictures of Elliot on his phone and admits regret. He was really too handsome to kill, too precious. It’s almost absurd that he would have made such a decision to destroy the only valuable thing in this world. Like a child breaking another’s toy because they weren’t allowed to play with it. Childish and stupid and impatient.</p><p>He needed to learn patience. He would learn patience.</p><p>Elliot would be his again, sooner or later.</p>
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